Balance Rehab: Big Focus of Outpatient Therapy

Balance Rehab: Quinn Part Thirteen

Quinn talks about the balance rehab along with therapy to help him walk again. He received outpatient therapy that included cognitive therapy also.

Let’s go through some discussion about the therapy you have had.  You were hospitalized two to three weeks and then once out, you did some outpatient therapy.

Yeah.

Talk to me about the outpatient therapy.

I had physical therapy to learn how to balance again, walk again.  I had cognitive therapy, how to try and think, try and communicate, try and remember.

Speech pathology?

Yeah, speech pathology.

Both of those?

Yeah.

Any vocational rehabilitation?

No, not yet.  I’m trying to get into vocational rehabilitation right now.

In your physical therapy, the primary focus was on walking and balance rehab?

Yeah, balance and walking.

Did they call any part of that vestibular therapy?

I don’t know what that, what that word is.

For information on vestibular disorders, injury to the inner ear which controls balance and dizziness, see http://vestibulardisorder.com

So, you’ve been working with physical therapist for walking and balance rehab not vestibular therapist.

I don’t know.

What did they do in the therapy to help you walk and balance rehab?

Did a lot of exercise with balance.  Like I would sit on a ball and that would, you know, rock if I looked one direction or another and, and then, you know, she would toss me a ball and I’d toss it back and things that were simply prior to the accident that I would have laughed at and said this is, you know, I mean this is simple and I was shocked at how hard some of the exercises were.

You could ice skate backwards before you got hurt.

Yeah.

Pretty difficult to do.

I could walk and chew gum at the same and now I, now I can’t.  Now multitasking is extremely hard.  It’s –

When you say multitasking and you joke about walk and chew gum, do you actually have difficulty doing anything but concentrating on physical things when you’re doing physical things?

I don’t think I have trouble.

When you first started walking, did you have to concentrate on walking?

No, but I would get reminded by my wife to stop dragging my foot.  Pick it up, which I didn’t even realize I was dragging it.  I didn’t realize I was, you know, I didn’t.  It was normal to me. I had to concentrate to put one foot in front of the other.

Next in Part Fourteen –  Physical Activity Still More Limited Than Before TBI

By Attorney Gordon Johnson

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